


Coming to Terms

by TheFlamingNymph



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Co-Parenting, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Long-Distance Relationship, Past Relationship(s), Vid Comm, Video Communication, falling back in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7314022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFlamingNymph/pseuds/TheFlamingNymph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost ten years after the end of the Reaper War, and two years after the birth of their daughter, Aeryn and Kaidan finally address the feelings they've been skirting around for a while now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming to Terms

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the Thane Dies variant of the Two Shepards AU.
> 
> Aeryn and Kaidan end up conceiving a child after a visit to reconnect and rekindle their friendship. After some discussion, both agreed they weren't quite ready to be a romantic thing again, but agreed to co-parent their daughter, Naomi.

The video wiggled and shifted, giving Kaidan a blurry view of the dark wall and its accessories behind the bed. Aeryn's head popped into frame a second later, hair in a sloppy braid and… horizontal.

“She's finally in bed and asleep.” She announced with an air of triumph, tired eyes crinkling at the corners as she smiled.

“You will be too, laying down like that.” Kaidan clucked his tongue at her and chuckled.

“Shush you. You didn't chaperone the Annual Summer Field Day on a hundred degree day, now did you?” The peeling skin of her nose attested to the strength of the sun that day. “I think I've earned a lie down.”

“I don't believe I argued that point. Just that you'd be asleep soon.”

Aeryn stuck her tongue out at him before fluffing her pillow and resettling herself. She closed her eyes as she mulled over a thought. “She looks so much like you when she's asleep, you know. Well, all the time actually.”

“Really? I don't know, I don't think the resemblance is as strong as you say.” Kaidan smiled, shifting the focus of his own camera as he leaned back and made himself more comfortable in his chair.

She snorted, not even opening her eyes. “Should I comm your mother for baby photos? Bet if I did and held them up to Naomi that they'd look exactly the same, just her longer hair. She looks exactly like you, Kaidan.”

“You're in there too --”

“Freckles. That's all she got from me, freckles.”

“Hey now, there's her hair too, it waves--”

“Yours might do that too, if you ever let it grow out.” She cracked an eye open at him, corners of her lips curling up in a smirk as she imagined it. “Might have magnificent waves, and you'd never know.”

“Maybe I should let it grow out, then we'd know for sure.” He grinned as her nose wrinkled in distaste.

“Ugh, no. Romance novel hair would… even you couldn't pull it off. I'm sorry. You'll have to stick with just having the body.” She shook her head and buried it further into the pillow, one eye disappearing completely to the fluff. The other watched him, barely cracked open. “It’s for the best though, really, that she gets her looks from her Daddy. Imagine the poor girl if she’d gotten my nose?”

“She’d be even more adorable. You have an adorable nose.”

The half of her smile that was visible was broad, eye crinkled deeply. “Must be the drowsiness talking, but that sounded like a compliment.”

“Always a tone of surprise.”

Her smile didn’t falter, and the conversation lapsed into comfortable silence as she struggled to keep her eye open, studying his face.

“How long are we going to do this, Kaidan?” She said after the silence had passed into minutes.

“Do what?”

“Staying up after Naomi's gone to bed to flirt, and pretending that's not exactly what we're doing?”

He opened his mouth to answer her, but closed it, watching her for a minute as he considered his answer. About how he felt lighter, freer, after these late night conversations with her. How comfortable he was with her, not just as one half of a parenting unit, but as friends. And now, perhaps, more.

“I love you, Aeryn.” He said with a good natured sigh and a smile.

“I love you too, Kaidan.”


End file.
